


we were dancing, dancing with our hands tied

by bucketofrice



Category: Figure Skating RPF, Olympics RPF
Genre: 5 Things, 5+1 Things, F/M, yay for ballet discourse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-10 09:27:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14734367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bucketofrice/pseuds/bucketofrice
Summary: "So, baby, can we danceOh, through an avalanche?"orTessa falls in love with dancing before she falls in love with Scott.





	1. first position

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title and lyrics: "Dancing with Our Hands Tied," Taylor Swift.
> 
> This was going to be a really long one-shot, and then it started getting really, really long, so now it's going to be in parts! Disclaimer: I am neither a ballet dancer nor a figure skater, despite wanting to be both as a child. All mistakes in those departments, as well as with timelines, are mine. Please feel free to call me out on them!
> 
> Section titles are the five basic ballet positions (yes, I know that's cheesy as hell, but I'm rolling with it).

**_first position_ **

She falls in love with ballet first. 

With music, with the feeling of connecting to a melody and letting it guide her, seeping into her bones so her whole body feels it, from her fingertips to her toes. With the way that she can now express herself, wordlessly, channelling emotions into movements that make sense, that resonate with other people. 

She falls in love with dancing first, not Scott.

Scott is a means to an end for her at the very beginning. The “outgoing Moir boy” is a bit too loud, a bit too gap-toothed, a bit too enthralled with hockey for her tastes. And she’s a bit too shy to say anything about it, to speak to him at all really, so Scott becomes an outlet for dancing, someone whose hand she can hold as they glide across the ice, spin and move into a dance hold.

Scott isn’t someone she talks to with words; they communicate through position changes, and hand squeezes, and as they round corners of the cold rink with their mothers looking on adoringly from behind the boards. Scott is a part of an equation for her, a facet to her dancing, and she thinks she’s the same for him. An opportunity to get better at skating so he can get better at hockey (he tells her he’s going to play for the Leafs and win the Stanley Cup one day).

So her chest shouldn’t ache when he beams as soon as his aunt Carol tells him he can switch his skates for the day, ditch the toe pick, and start hockey practice. Her hand shouldn’t feel empty when he lets go of it in a flash and speeds across the ice, without so much as a goodbye. 

Besides, she wants to be a ballerina, and ice dance is just a temporary thing.

She loves ballet, has for her whole life. She can see it so clearly in her mind’s eye: Tessa Virtue, principal dancer at the National Ballet, wearing a stark-white tutu and pointe shoes. She’s _Gisele_ — all soft lines and beauty and grace — floating across the stage, her movements precise and perfect. She leaps and twirls and flies, ethereal and graceful and _fluid_.

Ballet is such a stark difference from what skating with Scott is like — stiff, clumsy, _cold_ , and with a _boy_ — but the more she tries to hate the latter, her heart constricts at the thought of giving up the feel of her blade cutting into the ice, of the speed of skating, the way the wind rushes through her hair as she makes a turn.

Still: ballet. Every little girl’s dream. And when Tessa Virtue has a dream — a goal, really — she throws herself into it with single-minded determination. Even if that will eventually mean giving up skating.

She’s so determined to find things that are annoying and horrible about skating that she almost misses how she and Scott are gelling together. Their dance holds are becoming more comfortable, she can keep up with his speed now, and skating together doesn’t feel like a game of tag anymore. They’re properly in synch, and maybe, just maybe, skating with a boy isn’t _that_ bad.

Skating with a boy becomes even less bad when Scott pulls her behind the claw machine booth at the Ilderton Carnival, right after she won a blue stuffed bear. She’s clutching it tightly to her chest, confused as to what he’s up to. He looks at her for a second, his eyes quickly flitting around. Then leans in like he’s about to whisper a secret in her ear. He doesn’t.

He kisses her cheek instead, the quickest kiss she’s ever seen, but he turns as red as a tomato after, the flush creeping up his neck and to the tips of his ears. She thinks she looks about the same, all sweaty palms and burning cheeks. _What did he just do?_

“Tutu, do you wanna be my girlfriend?” 

Her eyes go wide at the suggestion, because she’s never been anybody’s girlfriend and she doesn’t quite know what that would mean. But she likes Scott, and holding his hand, and he kissed her cheek and that wasn’t so bad either. 

He’s looking at her with this big, dopey-eyed grin and she can’t help but giggle.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yes, I’ll be your girlfriend.”

Being boyfriend and girlfriend turns out to be kind of weird. Scott doesn’t really talk to her once they upgrade their relationship status. She doesn’t talk back, because if the “outgoing Moir boy” has been rendered speechless, well, then there has to be a very good reason.

Ms. Carol notices pretty quickly. So do both their mums. She ignores it as best she can.

Besides, it’s still ballet that’s most important to her. Leotards and tights over frilly dresses and skates. Swan Lake, not Austin Powers. The studio and the barre, not the cold rink.

Tessa Virtue will become a ballerina. She’s sure of it.

A few months after she and Scott become boyfriend and girlfriend, they still aren’t talking. She chalks it up to the fact that _this is what grownups do when they’re in relationships_ (boy, she’ll laugh at that one many years down the road) and keeps quiet about it. Their main form of communication is once again the dance hold. She’s not sure she likes it that way. 

Scott used to be fun; he used to crack jokes and make silly faces and point out things on the other side of the boards as they made their way around the rink. Now he’s quiet, shoots her glances every once in a while, and his hand feels weirdly clammy in hers.

Two weeks later, her mum calls her to the phone in the hallway. It’s Scott, she says, and his friends. She picks up, manages a polite “hello” before it’s three boys talking all at once, their voices stumbling all over one another. It takes a bit, but they manage to get to the reason for the phone call. Scott wants to break up with her. To just be friends.

She thinks it over — weighs cheek kisses against laughing and joking around — before clearing her throat and letting the boys know that she’s okay with being “just friends.” She hears Scott breathe out a huge sigh of relief, and she has to giggle.

That night, Tessa goes to bed feeling like she made a very adult decision, and she’s proud.

In the next few months, they’re better than ever. She and Scott are friends again, they goof off when nobody’s watching, share corners of a Marvin the Martian pillow when they fall asleep in the back of her mum’s car. She’s a bit more outgoing when she’s around him, not her usual, quiet self. He makes her feel safe, comfortable, brave.

The summer after she turns nine, her whole life changes.

The letter is in a cream-coloured envelope and she knows what’s in it even before her mum opens it. It has to be. Sure enough, it’s a letter from the National Ballet, and they want _her_ , want Tessa Virtue from London, to come to Toronto for the summer and train.

Being away from home is strange. Being in a dormitory with other little dancers is strange. Not having Scott by her side is strange. Not having the rink to go to is strange. But this is the _National Ballet_ , and it should feel like all her wildest dreams are coming true. 

So she throws herself into dancing, because this is her _dream_ , has been for so long, and it really is fun. It’s hard work, but there really is no feeling like spinning and leaping and flying and Tessa makes sure to soak it all in.

When the intensive is over and she’s back home in London, there’s another cream envelope sitting on the kitchen counter. She has an idea of what’s in it, because Lisa, who was her roommate at camp, said that sometimes, they ask dancers to come back to the ballet for school, and Tessa is “really, really good.” She runs her fingers over the parchment and scrunches her nose. Once again, this should feel like her wildest dreams are coming true.

Except … except, she’s not sure if this is her wildest dream anymore.

She should be squealing and laughing and dancing and thinking about what colour leotards they make the first years wear, and if she’s ever going to be as good at putting her hair in a ballet bun as her mum. She should be worrying about when she can get _en pointe_ for the first time, about who her roommate will be and if her teacher will be some strict old Russian ex-principal from the Bolshoi. 

(Little does she know there’s a different, strict Russian woman in her near future, who doesn’t lecture her about turnout but has enough to say about her upper body positioning and the edges of her blade.) 

She should be over the moon, but in reality, she’s looking at the unopened envelope with trepidation.

If she choses to go, she’ll have to leave Scott behind, leave skating behind, leave competition behind. And as much as she told herself a year ago that _skating will always be second to ballet_ , she’s not sure the order is the same now.

She sees Scott at the rink the next day, when she finishes her singles lesson (her jumps are getting better, but she doesn’t quite know if she likes skating alone). He takes off his guards and speeds toward her. “Heya, T!” he calls, grinning. “Did you have fun at the ballet?”

“Yeah.” She doesn’t know how to broach the subject, how to let him know that everything changed over one cream envelope in the mail. She scratches at the ice with her toe pick. “Scott, they asked me to stay. They want me to go to the school in Toronto.”

She looks up then, meets his eyes and watches his face fall, before he plasters a grin on it seconds later. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “Tutu! I’m so proud of you! You’ll be the prettiest ballerina out there!”

She’s so shocked by his reaction that she wants to cry. He really can be sweet sometimes, if he tries. “Scott, I said no.”

“What?” His eyes are as wide as saucers. This was her _dream_ , she told him about it almost every week, and she thinks he’s probably as shocked at her decision as her mum and sister had been.

“I’m not going. I want to keep skating, with you.”

It’s really as simple as that. The ice and the competition have overtaken the studio and ballet, and she smiles once she’s said it. Scott grins like she’s hung the moon.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments make my heart happy, so feel free to yell at me here or on tumblr, @good-things-come-in-threes!!


	2. second position

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. Yes, this is confusing and I apologize, but the formatting of this is getting kind of wacky, so I've split the first chapter into two. (This is not new content, just a new location.) Read on to chapter three for more. 
> 
> Thanks for understanding, sorry this site is such a mess.

**_second position_ **

Tessa and Scott get better and better at ice dance. They compete in regional events, and nearly win them all. Scott proclaims that they’ll be better than Danny and Sheri one day. She jabs him in the shoulder for that because,  _come on, they’re right over there, they could_ hear _you!_

The better they get at ice dance though, the more they have to give up outside of it. Tessa stops gymnastics first, then quits the synchro skating team after one season (she secretly hated it anyway), and decides she doesn’t like jumping and spinning enough to stay in singles.

Scott quits soccer and basketball. He’s too short anyway. He already quit singles a year ago, so that’s out of the way too. Hockey is next — it’s the fortieth yell of “stone hands” that does him in, and she has to remind him that his hands are not like that when they dance, that they’re graceful and supportive and strong.

What remains is skating — and ballet. It turns out ballet is great for ice dance, and Tessa thanks the heavens that she fell in love with dancing, not something utterly impractical like horse riding or swimming (… or Scott).

One side effect of ballet’s beneficial addition to an ice dancer’s training schedule is that Scott has to pick it up too. He grumbles about it from the get-go, rolls his eyes at all the French, and tries to goof off as best he can when their teacher isn’t looking. Tessa hates it at first, that he is suddenly  _there_  in this one part of her life she’s had to herself until now.

But pretty soon, Scott realizes that ballet really is helping him in ice dance, and he reverts to his disciplined self, taking the lessons more seriously. Tessa is thrilled. (It doesn’t mean he stops complaining about the French though.)

When they make the move to Kitchener-Waterloo, she finds solace in the dance studio. Of course, the rink will always be home to her, Scott’s sure grip will always ground her, and Suzanne is like an aunt to them both. But the dance studio and the barre are where Tessa can be alone, put on music and her pointe shoes, and sink into the movement, forgetting about everything around her.

She can let herself float, and jeté, and spin until she forgets where she is and how far they are from home. She loses herself in the motions and the darkened studio lights, and she almost misses her host mum calling from the other side of the room, waiting to drive her home.

She’s 15 when they move to Canton. It’s horribly young to be moving so far from home, she thinks, but then again, she’d be in a dormitory in Toronto at this point if she chose the NBC. At least this way, she has Scott. He’s her rock in the early years in Canton, when everything is bigger and faster and colder and  _more Russian_  than it ever was back home.

She’s back in another dance studio one evening, moving mindlessly around the space, trying to push Marina and Igor and Tanith and Ben and everything else to the back of her mind. She’s deep into a set of barre exercises —“Your core, Tessa! Must be strong for lift!” is Marina’s near-daily mantra — when she hears the door open.

It’s Scott. In dance clothes. In the studio after hours. She’s confused, stops her élevé and wipes the sweat from her brow.

“Thought I’d find you here, kiddo. Mind if I join?”

He crosses over to the barre and lines up behind her, close enough that she can feel his breath on the back of her neck. It sends a shiver down her spine. She resolutely ignores it. (She spends a lot of her life resolutely ignoring the fact that certain behaviour from Scott makes her heart beat faster, and her palms sweaty and her stomach fill with butterflies. It works out pretty well for a while, until it doesn’t. But the “doesn’t” won’t come for another few years.)

“Sure,” is all she says, before dipping down into a pliée, pressing the button on the stereo, and letting the room fill with music again. She and Scott are silent as they work at the barre, the only sound save for the music is their heavy breathing. Eventually, he motions out to the floor of the studio and puts his arms out for her.

A pas de deux.

They don’t really do this much — their joint ballet training is more of a tool than it is an art form, focused on improving their skating and dancing on the ice, not off of it — but every once in a while, they dance on solid ground, without blades attached to their feet. The pas de deux is improvised, and a little clunky, and Scott’s turnout leaves much to be desired, but Tessa doesn’t care. She’s dancing, and she’s flying, and she has the sudden realization that Scott is the only person she would ever want to dance with like this.

She stops, even though the music hasn’t ended, and Scott looks at her, confused.

“Why did you come here?” she asks.

“I figured you’d be here. And Marina wasn’t exactly nice this week. And I was worried about you.” He blushes and looks down at the ground. She beams. He really can be sweet sometimes.

“Thank you.”

The next exhibition piece they choreograph features her as a ballerina and him as a hockey player. They adore it. The crowds and commentators love it too. She gets to show off her ballet chops, he gets to be a goof, and at the end, they do what they do best: ice dance, together.

It’s a visual reminder of the fact that all the choices they made and dreams they gave up were worth it and made sense, because the dream they are able to chase together is an even bigger one. And chase it, they do. They get better and better and it feels like they’re headed toward the inevitable, like all their hard work is paying off.

When they don’t make the Olympics, they feel like their lives have ended. Watching the Games on TV in Canton while Marina is in Turin with Tanith and Ben is like being body-checked in hockey, Scott says from his side of the couch. Tessa can’t help but agree.

The weeks of the 2006 Winter Olympics easily rank up there with the worst of her life. She and Scott spend them in Canton, because they still have to train for junior worlds. Life doesn’t just take a neat and tidy three-week pause for the Games, though she wishes it would sometimes. Their mothers come down from London, and try to empathize as best they can, but at the end of the day, the only people in the world who know what this feels like are Scott and Tessa.

She spends almost every evening in the dance studio during those three weeks (except for when she and Scott watch figure skating with clenched teeth) channelling all her frustrations into the movement, into rapid fouettés and pirouettes that leave her dizzy and out of breath. She dances because she’s angry, because she feels like this dream of theirs was so close she could taste it, because the dream she had before will never come true.

When she sits down on the floor and grabs her water, her feet burn in ways they didn’t used to when she danced in pointe shoes. She realizes they’re getting so used to skates that the muscles are slowly adapting away from the ballet training. Hot tears spring up in her eyes and she sits there, legs spread wide, crying for a dream that she gave up years ago but never properly mourned.

If there’s one thing Tessa Virtue is, it’s resilient. It’s why she wipes away her tears, pushes herself up off the floor and vows to make the next four years count. Ice dancing, the Olympics, Scott: those are her dreams now, and she’s  _this_  close, and she’s not about to give up on them.

When she and Scott step out onto the ice the next morning, she takes the dance hold with newfound fervour. She works twice as hard, tries to get her edges twice as deep, and by the end of the practice, they’re both exhausted.

“We’re going to win in Slovenia,” she tells Scott matter-of-factly as they’re taking off their skates. “And then we’re going to move up to seniors, work as hard as we can in this next quad, and we’re going to stand on the podium in Vancouver.”

He meets her eyes — gaze tense, full of steeled determination — and nods. “Okay.”

They fly to Ljubljana two weeks later. They win.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments make my heart happy, so feel free to yell at me here or on tumblr, @good-things-come-in-threes!!


	3. third position

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! This is actually new content, apologies for the reformatting. We're in Umbrellas and Pink Floyd territory now. Please let me know what you think.

**_third position_ **

If Malagueña in Ljubljana is the perfect ending to one portion of their career, Valse Triste in Tokyo is the best kind of beginning to the next. They make the highest senior worlds debut in over two decades, and the feeling is glorious.

As they prepare for the next season in Canton, Tessa can’t help but feel like everything is falling into place. She feels herself into Umbrellas of Cherbourg with more fervour than she ever has a free dance, absorbing every note and nuance and pouring her soul out there, onto the ice, with Scott.

He does the same — even though the lyrics are in French and it’s a 1960s romance musical and anyone who knows him would be surprised by his enthusiasm — and skating feels like flying, walking on air, her head amongst the clouds and her heart bared for everyone to see.

Umbrellas is a dream, from start to finish. 

When she’s on the ice with Scott, nothing else matters. They’re just a boy and a girl, dancing with one another. There are no Russian coaches yelling from the boards, there’s no competition, no one expecting anything of them. They’re just two people, gliding across the ice, hands and minds and bodies linked together, moulded to one another. 

It’s the best pas de deux she’s ever danced, the most she’s ever felt connected to another human being, their emotions palpable and accessible and so raw that she thinks they need bandages sometimes, to patch up all the feelings and boundaries between them that this free dance is ripping to shreds. But she doesn’t want that, not really. Because it’s so much more than a dance.

Umbrellas is an escape.

From the incessant pain in her shins — which she talks about only with her physiotherapist and her mother, and hides from the rest of the world with a tight-lipped smile — from whatever weird, crackling tension is building between her and Scott. From the realization that they’re two years out from another Olympics, and the part of her brain that remains convinced that this’ll all end up like Turin did, with crushing disappointment. 

Umbrellas earns them their first senior worlds medal. 

Umbrellas wins the free dance portion of the competition.

Umbrellas carves out a permanent spot in her heart.

They arrive back in Canton feeling like they can conquer the world. It’s heady, and intoxicating, and utterly addicting. She and Scott are riding the high, full of cocky teenage bravado, ready to throw themselves into training for the next season and get even better, rise even higher, do everything in their power to stay on the upward path that will (hopefully, no, definitely) take them to the podium in Vancouver. They laugh when even Marina, ever incessant Marina, suggests they take a break, when Meryl and Charlie suggest they all go on a vacation to the lake, when everyone around them suggests they _might want to take a little breather, okay?_

In hindsight, she thinks, as she sits on her bed and ices her shins for the third time that day, the breather would’ve been a good fucking idea. Might’ve saved her from _this_ , from being practically bed-ridden outside of practice at the rink and her thrice-weekly PT sessions. But as it is, they didn’t take one and crashed and burned instead. Well, she did, anyway.

Scott is still at the rink, and in the gym, because his shins didn’t fail him. Didn’t fail them. No, that one’s fully on her. And she knows, from countless talks with her doctors and her mother and the sports psychologist she’s been forced to see lately, that medically speaking, none of this is her fault. Still, she can’t help the guilt she feels every time she looks down at her legs and realizes they’re incapable of doing the one thing she needs them to do, and that it’s dragging Scott down with her.

It’s why she agreed to the surgery in the first place, insisted really. Because the doctor said that no matter how much they tried to keep the compartment syndrome at bay, it would most likely impede her skating. And she couldn’t live with that. True to form, Tessa had chosen her dream (and Scott) and pushed forward with single-minded determination.

The surgery is tomorrow, and she’s in her childhood bedroom in London, icing her shins _again_ in the hopes that this will be one of the last times she’ll need to. God, she needs this to work. There’s no alternative. She looks around the room — at skating medals and pictures of her ballet performances and everything in between — and feels like she’s in some sort of weird shrine to all the facets of her life. It’s skating and dancing and Scott, and she really doesn’t know where _Tessa, full stop_ fits into that picture. She doesn’t really want to find out at age nineteen.

She’s so absorbed in her thoughts that she doesn’t hear the incessant clunking noise at her windowpane. Confused, she moves the ice packs and hobbles over, pushing up the glass. Scott is standing in her front lawn, armed with pebbles from the decorative flower bed her mum put in the summer before. She’d kill him if she knew. 

“What are you doing?” she shouts, because it’s almost midnight and _what the hell, Scott?_

He shrugs his shoulders and gives her a grin. “Can I come up?”

She nods, because it’s really not worth arguing about this when he’s gonna come anyway. By the way he looks at the drainpipe on her house, she can tell there’s a moment where he considers scaling it. But only one of them is supposed to have surgery tomorrow, thank you very much, so she tosses him her keychain (or tries to, but her aim is shit, and it lands in a flowerbed instead) and he lets himself in through the front door, padding up the stairs in socked feet. When he reaches her room, she’s already back on the bed, icing her shins again. He closes the door behind him and just stands there for a second, looking oddly out of place.

“Hey.” He scratches the back of his neck. “How are you?”

She looks down at her shins, then back up at him. She quirks an eyebrow, as if to say _seriously, you’re asking me that?_ and he blushes. She just shakes her head and motions for him to sit down on the bed next to her. Sometimes words aren’t necessary between them, and this might be one of those times, she thinks, as they interlace their fingers. If anyone knows what she’s going through right now, it’s him. If anyone can help her remember and forget in the same breath, it’s him.

That closeness, that undefinable bond, is what leads her to do the one thing she’s stopped herself from doing for years now. She leans over, ditches the ice packs, faces Scott and presses her lips to his. She does it for a multitude of reasons.

One: she’s been wanting to do this for years now, ever since he hit puberty and stopped looking a little less like a twelve-year-old all the time. There was once a truly mortifying phone call she had with Jordan, after she made the realization, in which her sister had to listen to her nearly combust because _he doesn’t have the right to get cute all of a sudden!_

Two: she needs a distraction from the fact that they’re literally going to slice her legs open in less than twenty-four hours. Needs to forget that her entire career, and entire life, if she’s being honest, hinges on this working. And she’s spiralling with her thoughts, so she needs a break.

Three: he may just want this too. If she takes a step back and analyzes their respective shifts toward each other — on and off the ice — over the past few years, she has to come to the conclusion that he definitely presses closer to her, holds her hand longer, and nuzzles his face in the crook of her neck more often than strictly necessary. So whatever this means to him, there is possibly a similar crackle of physical attraction there. Or so she hopes.

She hopes correctly, because as spilt second after she presses her lips to his, he reacts, cupping her face with his hands and pulling her closer. Pretty soon, hands and lips and limbs are everywhere, their clothes are being tossed through the room without a care in the world, and every boundary or line Umbrellas had begun to chew on officially rips in two.

It’s glorious, this horizontal dance with Scott, because he knows every dip and curve and swell of her body, and she likes to think she knows every angle and centimetre of his too. They come together like in all their great lifts — a team, working in synchronicity — except now, there is no ISU, no Igor judging their levels. There’s only Tessa’s childhood bedroom, dark save for the moonlight.

It’s just a boy and a girl, who fall asleep in each other’s arms thinking that together, they’re invincible.

Reality hits them hard the next morning. Scott sneaks out at the crack of dawn, after kissing her deeply and telling her she’s gonna be great today, and he knows that because she’s the best partner in the whole world. She smiles, and tears up a little, and thanks the heavens that he’s by her side.

The surgery goes well, all things considered. Her parents and her sister are at her bedside as she wakes up. Scott is nowhere to be seen. She’s confused, but thinks that he’ll probably be there soon enough.

He doesn’t come. Instead, he subjects her to two months of radio silence.

She wants to weep as she sits back on the bed they had last shared, her legs elevated and a book on her lap. She wants to weep as she looks around her room again, sees skating medals and pointe shoes and looks down at the new scars on her legs, scars that are there because of him.

Doesn’t he realize that she did all of this — skating for months on end in excruciating pain, having the goddamn surgery — for _him_? And that it crushes her that he doesn’t even have the decency to call her after and ask if she made it through okay? That his mother and his brothers are the ones to check up on her? That he leaves her alone in London for two months while rumours float up from Canton (mainly through cryptic texts from Meryl) that Marina is lining up new partners for him left and right?

Doesn’t he know that she feels like half of herself is missing because he isn’t there? Doesn’t he get it?

She spends two months in London recovering, both physically and mentally. She realizes she needs to put the bandages back on, needs to compartmentalize Scott and skating and ballet and everything else, because she can’t bear to flay herself open like that again. She needs to understand how Tessa Virtue, ice dancer, full stop, works as a person. 

She needs to shove the girl who dreamed of a pas de deux with the boy who hung the moon to the back of her mind.

She’s glad their free dance is Pink Floyd this year. It’s so far from ballet that she has no problem throwing herself into it with abandon. She says as much to Scott when she sees him again, and there’s an unspoken understanding between them. No more pas de deux, no more kissing. They’re athletes, professionals. They should know better.

She hangs the bronze medal from worlds up in her bedroom months later. She and Scott are friends again. The tutus and pointe shoes have migrated to a closet.

It’s better that way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments make my heart happy, so feel free to yell at me here or on tumblr, @good-things-come-in-threes!!


	4. fourth position

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, hello! Thank you for the lovely response to this fic, you're all too sweet.
> 
> This chapter covers Vancouver. There were tears shed whilst writing this (watching Katia Gordeeva's Mahler followed by VM's is a surefire way to make you tear up, just saying), so I hope it was worth it! Still, please watch her rendition for the full chapter experience. It's truly a work of art and heartbreakingly beautiful.
> 
> Please let me know what you think, comments are my lifeblood.

**_fourth position_ **

Mahler is the biggest gift Marina will ever give them.

It’s also the biggest responsibility.

Tessa realizes this when their coach pulls them into her office, sits them down, and tells them the story of Katia Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov. It’s a story of skating, of marriage, of a child and of loss, but mostly, it’s a story of so much love — real and palpable and bigger than they could’ve ever imagined. Marina tells them about the music, _Mahler’s 5th_ , and then, as she looks at her two pupils like they might just be the future, she turns on the tiny television in the corner and pops in the tape.

The lights go on over an empty rink. A figure skates to centre ice.

A note, then two.

It’s Katia, alone, and it feels like a part of her is missing. Sergei.

The music swells and Katia starts skating: long, sure strokes and deep edges, raising her hands to grasp for something that’s just out of reach. She looks like she’s skating with a ghost, with the memory of someone, with the hope that her partner will appear out of thin air and join her for one last dance.

He doesn’t. She soldiers on, with a grace Tessa cannot help but be in total awe of. She can feel Katia’s pain, the longing in every single movement, but there’s innate beauty in it too, in how she expresses immense grief and love through the music and through movement on the ice.

Katia finishes the skate — pushing herself up on one arm, the other raised to the sky, to Sergei — to thunderous applause and with tears in her eyes.

The screen goes dark, then fills with static. Marina turns off the television and clears her throat.

Tessa has tears in her eyes, as she sits there in her coach’s cold office at Arctic Edge and realizes what Marina believes she and Scott can do. She glances over at him; his eyes are glistening with tears of their own.

Tessa tears her eyes away from Scott for long enough to focus her attention on Marina. The look she’s sporting is the most emotion Tessa thinks she’s ever seen from the woman.

“Katia and Sergei had special relationship on ice, just like you. Mahler was story of that relationship. You understand?”

They both dutifully nod. 

“Good. Because you will write next chapter.”

True to Tessa’s prediction, Mahler is a gift and an enormous responsibility, all wrapped into one. 

She and Scott take it — and Farrucas, because, yeah, there are four programs to contend with this season, what with two compulsories — more seriously than they’ve ever taken a program before. And that’s saying something.

Mahler is precious to them. Tessa thinks that it’s the program that’s come together most organically since they started skating, and she so desperately wants to do it justice. For Canada. For Katia. For Marina. But most of all, for Scott, and for herself.

They feel themselves into the edges and the lifts and the twizzles and step sequences, practising until they feel like the music has seeped into every single pore of their bodies. 

When they go to the first costume fitting, and she stands in front of the mirror in a white dress, the transformation is complete. No longer Gisele, in the long white tutu and pointe shoes, but _Tessa_ , in a flowing skating costume, with snow white skates to match. The duckling has become the swan.

(Or rather, the _goose_ , but that’s less pretty a metaphor, and who’s really paying attention to the proper ornithology among all the rhinestones? She isn’t, that’s for sure.)

A few months into the season, her legs start aching again. She tries to ignore it at first, like she always has, but soon, it’s all too much. 

It’s December, and she winces as Scott sets her down in the exit from a lift, the pain hitting her like a bolt of lightning. She doubles over to clutch her shins, and instantly, she feels his arm on her back. Supporting her. Calming her. She looks up to see the pain in his face, his look mirroring what she feels herself. He guides her to the boards, shielding her from Marina, whose eyes are boring into her from the other side of the rink.

“I’ve got you,” he says into her hair, and she’s tempted to believe him. To believe that this isn’t like last time —

(Last time was confusion, anger, what _seemed_ like understanding and support, sex, surgery, then silence. Deafening silence. Last time was hell.)

— that this time, Scott is her best friend and her skating partner and her rock and a little less of a _boy_ than he was just over a year ago. But she’s scared. So fucking terrified that her legs are going to fail them again in two and a half months’ time, in front of the entire world. Scared he’s going to drop it all if they do, that the fragile friendship they’d pieced back together after Umbrellas and the surgery all but flayed them apart won’t hold. She’s terrified of losing her whole world.

She doesn’t realize she’s started crying until they’re sitting on a bench, her skates are off and she’s got her legs propped up on the wall. It’s an odd angle, but they’re making it work, and Scott’s holding her close and wiping the tears off her cheeks.

“Don’t cry, kiddo,” he soothes, his voice low. “It’s your legs again, right?”

She nods, chokes back another sob, and he presses a kiss to her hair.

“I’ve got you,” he murmurs. “Shhh.”

That she makes it to Vancouver in one piece is nothing short of a miracle. Her physiotherapist, her mother, her coaches, Scott — everyone is working overtime to make sure she’s alright. It’s equal parts reassuring, comforting and frustrating as hell.

And all the while, no one’s allowed to know. The media, the fans, hell even Skate Canada think she’s in perfect health. If they only knew. Knew that every step she takes is measured, every second budgeted and accounted for, and she thinks she spends more time on the physio table in her room than in Canada House as a whole.

Tessa doesn’t feel like an _athlete_. She feels like a patient in a sick bay, only allowed outside for visiting hours. _Would you like to take a trip to the cafeteria today, Ms. Virtue? I hear there’s excellent chocolate pudding at the table near the slalom skiers! Or do some light walking down the halls? Follow me past the gym where the biathletes train!_

It’s no use to wallow, though, they need to be fully focused for their skates, and every practice session gets her closer to the feeling she’s been chasing. The feeling of being an _Olympian_.

They skate the compulsory, a Tango Romantica. Their edges are deep, their steps executed from their fingertips to their toes. Second.

They follow with their original, a flamenco, Farrucas. The arena lights up, enraptured by the movement, the speed, the precision, the intricacy of their steps in time with the castañuelas. First.

Now all that stands between them and a dream is Mahler. It’s their swan song.

She doesn’t remember much of what happens around her once she steps on Olympic ice for the third time. It’s like all her focus zeroes in on two things: Mahler and Scott, and the rest of the world ceases to exist for four minutes.

Two figures skate to centre ice.

A note, then two.

They’re facing away from another, but Scott comes closer, takes her hands, kisses her knuckles, and they dance.

The music swells and they’re floating, all sure strokes and deep edges and clean lines. It’s sweeping and symphonic, two people coming together as one for precious minutes as the rest of the world fades to grey. She can feel every note in her fingertips, and she reaches just that little bit further than she ever has before. She skates like her life depends on it, and Scott does too. She can feel it in every stroke, in the surety of his movements, in all their cues. 

This, this feeling on this sheet of ice, with the whole world watching, is true synchronicity.

When the music ends, Scott messes up the final pose (in retrospect, it’s the most perfectly imperfect thing she can think of) but she can’t bring herself to care. This Mahler wasn’t for anyone. This was _theirs_.

“Thank you so much,” he whispers, because there are cameras everywhere and she knows he can’t say the multitude of things he wants to right now. Knows because she can’t either. Those four words will have to be enough.

Those four words and the hug that he sweeps her up in seconds later. That hug speaks volumes, the language only understood by its participants. It’s physical morse code.

When their scores are announced: 110.42 for the free, 221.57 overall, she’s overcome with a monumental wave of relief. They actually did it. They skated the best skates of their lives that night. She’s flooded with sheer joy a fraction of a second later, lets Igor pull her into a hug and doesn’t even notice that Scott shoots out of the Kiss and Cry like a bullet, whooping into the air, and hugs Marina before her. And even if she does notice, she can’t bring herself to care.

Seconds later, he’s got a firm grip on her, lifting her off her feet and swaying them a little. They’re both radiating pure elation, clinging to each other for dear life. She pulls out of his embrace — just a fraction — her eyes wide with disbelief and her smile enormous as she bursts out “I think we just won the Olympics” and Scott lights up like a Christmas tree.

It turns out, they did.

What follows is a blur. There’s press, there’s a medal ceremony (Scott falls off the podium and really, what else was anyone expecting), there’s more press and celebration and they’re suddenly Canada’s sweethearts and holy shit, they have two Olympic gold medals and they’re so happy they could burst. 

Before they know it, they’re in the tunnel at the gala, ready to step out on Olympic ice one more time. Scott’s hand is gripping hers like a vice. They’ve brought back their old exhibition skate. It’s fun, it’s a little bit cheesy, it’s Canadian, and it’s _them_.

Scott’s voice is quiet as he whispers “Tutu, I’m so proud of you.” She smiles at the nickname, thinks back to when they first met, over a decade ago. So much has changed, but so much has stayed the same.

“I’m proud of you too, Scott.” One more squeeze, and they push forward onto the ice.

This time, as they skate their exhibition in front of Canada and the whole world — as the ballerina in the platter tutu and the hockey player in the red jersey — it feels like a love letter to their former selves, a goodbye to who they thought they were supposed to be, and an embrace of all that’s to come.

They go home on a high. Reality comes crashing in quickly. Her legs, the looming World Championships, the uncertainty of their future.

Somehow, they win. In Turin. How ironic.

They make it through touring and the off-season, basking in their Olympic glory.

In the fall, she sits down with another team of doctors. Her mother is there, and Jordan. But this time, so is Scott, holding her hand through it all.

They don’t have sex the night before her surgery.

But he’s there — with flowers and chocolate and a goofy grin on his face — the second she wakes up. Her heart skips a beat, and the bandages she put on post-Umbrellas start loosening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments make my heart happy, so feel free to yell at me here or on tumblr, @good-things-come-in-threes. I recently got a Twitter, its @_bucketofrice, I have no clue what I'm doing, but feel free to drop by!


	5. fifth position

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter we cover rhythm, Audrey Hepburn, the art of seduction, reality television, crushing disappointment, ill-fitting pointe shoes and a fragile dance.
> 
> Please let me know what you think! :')

**_fifth position_ **

In April, they don’t quite find _the rhythm section_ of Hip Hip, Chin Chin, and Meryl and Charlie beat them at Worlds. It’s their first full competition after her second surgery, and Scott pulls her into a hug after they sneak away from all the media, rubbing his hand up and down her back and reminding her that a silver at the World Championships is _really not that shabby_ , all things considered.

She snorts, giving him an exasperated look. He really can be sweet sometimes.

Tessa considers their next set of programs a personal victory. She knows Scott will use his veto power for Pride and Prejudice and Hall & Oates until the day he dies, so she does a full-on happy dance in the hallway outside Marina’s office when he agrees to a Funny Face medley. She doesn’t even care that Meryl walks past and gives her a side-eye. 

Nope, because _she_ gets to skate as Audrey Hepburn, and her partner is the absolute best. In the beginning, Scott may be a little more enthused about her enthusiasm than the program itself, but he grows to love it, and she’s thrilled. 

(Until they go to their first costume fitting, that is, and he learns that he has to sport a middle part to properly embody Fred Astaire. She insists it’s for accuracy purposes, but she can’t help but laugh at the pout that spreads across his face.)

When he leaves that stupidly large bucket of rice at her doorstep with a handwritten note, she’s convinced he’s the best man on the planet.

They win Worlds again, but their skates aren’t faultless. And as the perfectionists (and quite frankly, Canadians) they are, they’re hesitant to accept all the congratulations at face value. There’s always room for improvement, always a way to innovate and create something new and unexpected.

New and unexpected aren’t necessarily words Tessa would use to describe Marina’s suggestion for their next free dance. Carmen is a warhorse, and everyone knows it. She and Scott sit across a table from their coach and share worried glances. Marina looks way too pleased with herself for this.

“Your Carmen will be story of temptation and lust. Tessa will play seductress. Everything black. Carmen like never seen before.”

Oh, _that’s_ why she looks so pleased.

They’re momentarily dumbfounded, but Marina’s pretty set on the idea, so what could really go wrong?

_A lot_ , is the answer to that question, which she realizes when they start to work on choreography. When Marina said “temptation and lust” she really meant it, and Tessa and Scott have had to buckle up and go along for the ride.

If she’s being honest, Tessa is kind of relishing in this new role Carmen has given her. It’s powerful, and sexy, and a far cry from Mahler and snow-white innocence. She gets to take charge for once, try her hand at seduction, and she’s growing more fond of it by the day. Scott, always one to support and empower all the women around him, has admitted to her that he finds her newfound Carmen “kind of fierce.” She doesn’t know whether she’s blushing harder at his turn of phrase or the way the low cadence of his words and sly grin make her spine tingle.

That’s all to say that preparations are going well, and the inside of the Arctic Edge is steadily heating up day by day. Until Marina, her face filled with what Tessa can only describe as “evil genius glee,” presents them with her newest lift idea.

_Oh no._ _No, no, no, no, no._

She looks from Scott to Marina and back at Scott again, her mind running wild with all the possible things the lift their coach is describing could look like. Scott has gone beet red, the flush creeping up from his neck all the way to the tips of his ears, and she’s pretty sure she looks the same.

“What—?” Scott starts, looking to her for some sort of guidance, but Marina is one step ahead.

“Tessa will jump backward, Scott catch her and hold her against his shoulders.”

“But that’ll look like—”

“Yes, Scott,” Marina says, raising an eyebrow at him like he’s an unruly child. “It look like oral sex. All of us adults here. No need to talk around it.”

_Oh, hell no._

But Marina gets what Marina wants, and that means _that lift_ is now a part of their free dance. And practice continues as usual.

The fact of the matter is that playing a ruthless seductress opposite her skating partner of over a decade — all while acting out sequences that could, if they were to remove several layers of clothing, be detailed instruction manuals for a number of sex positions — is making it hard for Tessa to ignore whatever physical attraction she’s ever felt toward Scott.

He’s struggling too, she can tell, from the way he presses his lips dangerously close to her neck and collarbone whenever he can, his hot breath making her skin prickle and not helping their whole “friends, nothing more” situation. On any given day, compartmentalizing her feelings for Scott is difficult enough, but now, he’s staring at her with unbridled passion in his eyes (it’s all part of the free dance, she swears) and it’s becoming harder and harder not to act.

Which is why it shouldn’t surprise her that she practically jumps him one night, when they’re at his place watching hockey and he’s tense, his jawline defined as he chews on the ring from his water bottle. He’s always had a damn oral fixation, and she’s never found it more attractive than that night pent up with so much unresolved tension from their daily practices.

It takes him a second to react, once she’s grabbed his face and slotted her mouth against his. But only one.

Pretty soon, they’re tearing at each other’s clothing, desperate for skin-to-skin contact. She feels her brain go foggy as he latches on to her collarbone, nipping and sucking and peppering kisses to her skin. This is _nothing_ like the first time they had sex.

That time was gentle, and slow, two people getting to know the ins and outs of one another, connecting in a way that no one else could. It was a true pas de deux, synchronicity, and so beautiful she wanted to weep. 

This time is raw, and passionate, and like they’re flaying each other open without a care in the world. It’s not Tessa and Scott, it’s Carmen and Don Jóse, and they lose a bit of themselves and each other that night, pushing and pulling relentlessly, until they crash together in a pile of sweaty limbs.

Before her surgery, they slept together. Now, Tessa thinks, they’re just fucking (with themselves and with one another).

Words are scarce the next morning. They don’t mention what happened for another week, when she ravages him again in the front seat of his pickup truck, next to a highway somewhere between Canton and London.

It becomes a habit all season. They don’t talk about it though. Carmen goes through highs and lows, never _quite_ finding its groove over the course of the season.

Worlds is in London that year. A hometown crowd.

They lose. 

(Not really; they get silver, but it feels like a loss all the same. It feels like they’ve let down their own country. It hurts.)

They stop fucking, sit down, and refocus. One year till the Olympics.

Tessa likes to think of herself as a perceptive person. Likes to think she’s aware enough to see Marina’s support flounder, her devotion focusing more on their training mates with every passing day. Scott is blinded by loyalty. They fight. He wins.

She puts a contingency plan in place. A bridal photoshoot. A goddamn reality show. It’s awful, but necessary.

It’s not enough.

If they thought losing a hometown World Championships was bad, they were wholly unprepared for the absolute crushing disappointment of Sochi. It’s truly them against the world in Russia — well, really them against the ISU and Marina, but for a couple of ice dancers that may as well be the whole world — and it hurts them beyond belief.

Silver in the team event is a blow, but they’re still proud to stand on the podium with their friends and fellow athletes, to be reminded that there is a world outside their little bubble.

Before the short dance, Scott looks at her, with complete singular focus and takes her hands in his.

“No matter what, we’re together, and no matter what, I love you, and no matter what, we’re gonna enjoy this.”

They do, they pour their heart and souls into that short dance, and when the music ends, it’s _their_ Olympic moment. Theirs and no one else’s. The scores are atrocious, but the moment, that’s theirs forever.

When she says afterward that they skated their best in the free dance, she’s not kidding. They delivered nothing short of excellence, but in these Games, even perfection wouldn’t have been enough. They resigned themselves to the outcome long ago, but it doesn’t make the blow hurt any less.

Silver feels like coal on Christmas, like an awful breakup, like being let down by those closest to you.

Silver feels like betrayal.

But they put on brave faces, forced smiles and feigned enthusiasm from the moment their scores are announced to the minute they leave Russia. They’re stronger than this.

Their career isn’t. They unanimously decide this is it, for real, sitting cross-legged on her bed in the village, a bottle of vodka between them (it’s Russia, after all). That night, in Canada House, she sees Scott making out with a curler in the corner.

For once, the girl doesn’t look like a knockoff of her. A part of her is disappointed by the discovery.

When they get back home, they go through the motions. They’re still Canada’s darlings, after all. She starts racking up sponsorships and collaborations in the mean time, enrols in more classes to finish her degree, and commits to a “year of yes.” She’s trying to figure out who Tessa Virtue, full stop, is, without ice dance, and without Scott.

A few months later, and no clear picture of Tessa Virtue in sight, she finds herself in a dance studio after dark. It’s an achingly familiar situation, to nights in Kitchener and Canton. She loses herself in the music, in movement and in herself, the dance giving voice to everything she’s been unable to process since the Games. It’s freeing, and utterly draining.

She sits down on the hardwood floor and pulls a pair of pointe shoes out of her bag. It’s absolutely idiotic, what she’s about to try, but she can’t help herself. If Tessa can’t do ballet, then who is she, really?

The shoes barely fit. Years of ice dance have retrained her feet.

She tries to push herself up using the barre, but the pain is too much and she sinks to the floor again. On the floor of yet another studio in yet another city, Tessa weeps.

Over a year passes, Scott gets serious with Kaitlyn. Their relationship is back to being a fragile friendship. But something is missing, and she can feel it deep in her bones.

They start circling the subject — and each other — in Scotland. There’s something about the highlands, she thinks, that clears her mind and opens her eyes to what she’s missing without Scott by her side every day. When they lock eyes from across the bar as Miku croons in the corner, it feels like he’s reaching out his hand and asking her to dance with him again. 

The next few weeks are spent talking in hypotheticals. About dream programs, dream coaches, what they would technically have to do to win a gold again. All the while, she steps closer and closer to his imaginary outstretched hand, leans forward in an arabesque, almost touching.

They’re on the Great Wall, feeling like tiny specks in the vastness of the universe, when he broaches the question for real. No more hypotheticals, just Tessa and Scott, together against the world. He looks at her with such sincerity in his eyes that it takes her breath away.

“Just us? Two more years? Another gold?”

She nods her head, a smile creeping across her face that’s quickly matched by the grin on his own. He reaches for her with his hand, and she almost laughs at her metaphor becoming more tangible by the second. 

“C’mere, T,” is all it takes.

She fits his outstretched hand in hers, and, as a piece of her heart slots back into place, they dance. 

Right there, on top of the Great Wall of China, sweaty and in workout clothes. She doesn’t care. It’s her and Scott, and they fit. 

Finally, after all those years: a pas de deux. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments make my heart happy! Feel free to yell at me here or on tumblr, @good-things-come-in-threes or on Twitter @_bucketofrice.


	6. variation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! We've reached the end, which is bittersweet. I'm sad to see this one go, but I sincerely hope you enjoy the ending.
> 
> This chapter got a bit long, I'm afraid. Whoops?
> 
> (A note: in ballet, a variation is a sequence of movement that originates from the basic positions. For this and all other ballet knowledge, thank you to a truly kind person, you know who you are. Also, if I messed up, I'm sorry!)
> 
> Please let me know what you think, comments mean the world.

**_variation_ **

Tessa stands in her new apartment in Montreal, surveying the boxes and the general chaos, and starts drafting a mental list of the things that didn’t make it through the move in one piece.

  1. A pale blue teacup with daisies around the rim, reduced to shards.
  2. The corner of the glass box that holds Scott’s signed Tigers baseball, now sporting a decently sized hole.
  3. Tessa’s small makeup mirror, which has acquired quite an impressive crack.
  4. Scott’s relationship with Kaitlyn, which, to his credit, ended a full three weeks after they decided to come back.



She knows the breakup was not her fault, logically, that it was Scott and he makes his own life decisions and that she will never be fully privy to what happened between him and Kaitlyn (nor should she be). But there’s part of her that feels guilty, for the fact that she has, inadvertently or intentionally, come between him and every single one of his girlfriends.

Besides, she had genuinely _liked_ Kaitlyn: she was laid-back, sweet and funny and outgoing and exactly the type of person who Scott Moir, beer and hockey-loving, country music-singing, family-oriented boy from Ilderton, should end up with. Which, coincidentally, was the whole reason Tessa really couldn’t stand Kaitlyn, and the guilt ate at her every single day.

Because Tessa is none of those things: she’s an over-analyzer, introverted, thinks everything through five million times before making a move and would never listen to Kenny Chesney of her own free will. If she’s being honest, nothing about her screams “would be the perfect match for one Scotty Moir, quintessential Canadian country boy.” 

But that’s not all Scott is. Scott is a skater, a once-in-his-generation talent on a blade, his edges deeper than anyone she’s ever seen. He’s a dancer through and through, though he’s shy to admit it; he connects with music in a way that’s raw and visceral and real. He loves travel, and trying new food, and won’t say no to a glass of fine wine. He’s nuanced, and sophisticated, and looks damn good in a tux: clean-shaven, starched and pressed, suspenders hidden below his coat, because he _knows_ she likes them.

Scott is either the former or the latter to most, and a duplicity to the few who can’t quite wrap their heads around him, who are convinced that he must be one or the other and otherwise keeping up an elaborate ruse.

Only Tessa knows the true expanse of him, how all the pieces fit together to create one person, layered and varied and complex and above all, endlessly kind. Boisterous and silly, but serious and thoughtful. Exuberant and tactile, but also sombre and respectful. His heart on his sleeve but his head always focussed. 

Generous and forward-thinking and deeply grateful. Analytical. Deliberate. Supportive.

Scott.

And he’s all she’s ever wanted.

It hits her like a bolt of lightning, jolts her upright in the middle of her new living room in Saint-Henri in November, boxes all around. 

It’s the whole reason they came back, if she really thinks about it, to be near one another again in the way you have to be when you spend hours together on the ice every day, training for three and four-and-a-half minutes of the most intense pressure you’ll ever feel, just to possibly walk away with a medal at the end of the day. They came back to move into apartments in the same building, to cook dinner together and watch movies and carpool to the rink, to be each other’s support system, to create together, to be together.

To be together.

_Oh._

She came back to be with him, but did he come back to do the same?

The tail end of the year passes by in a blur. They do so many technical drills in the next few weeks that she thinks she could perform them in her sleep, upside down or blindfolded. They spend nearly all of their time together, split between apartments, expertly ignoring the fact that their behaviour escaped the typical definition of platonic friendship months ago. 

They move in each others’ space with an ease and grace that takes her breath away, like a perfectly rehearsed dance. She supposes that’s what their partnership really is, at its core. A careful dance of push and pull, give and take, of two beings coming together as one. Synchronicity.

Fate has funny ways of rearing its head sometimes, Tessa thinks at the end of December, when she’s on her way to Toronto for New Year’s and a one-night stint as a cannon doll in the Nutcracker at the National Ballet. 

Somehow, the biggest dream she had when she was seven years old is finally coming true — albeit not at all how she’d imagined it. But, as the plane touches down at Pearson and Scott gives her thigh a reassuring squeeze (he’s coming along to support her and meet up with their friends for New Year’s Eve celebrations) she thinks that everything worked out in the end.

Taking the stage is terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure. Her nerves are all over the place, and she wishes Scott were there to pull her into their pre-competition hug, to synch her heartbeat to his and reassure her that she’s not alone going out there. Instead, her partner for the night gives her shoulder a squeeze and smiles at her. It’ll have to do.

Five minutes, a tiny solo and two lifts later, Tessa can officially say that she’s danced with the NBC.

She meets Scott in a nondescript hallway after the performance (he wanted to remain unseen, because he insisted this was _her_ night and her dream) and he’s sporting the biggest smile she thinks she’s ever seen on his face. He brought flowers and he pulls her in for a hug as soon as she’s in reach, squeezing tight.

“Tutu, you did it! I’m so proud of you.”

She grins right back and it’s like they’re seven and nine again, chasing after dreams with reckless abandon. Her mum and sister join them then, gushing over Tessa’s rag doll impersonation but she only has eyes for Scott, who’s looking at her in that special way he reserves just for her — _like she’s infinitely precious and his whole world_.

They walk back to the hotel after saying goodbye to her family, his arm draped over her shoulder, her head resting on his. Bundled up in winter coats, they’re taking in the city lights and the last few weeks of relative anonymity they have left before they tell all of Canada that Virtue and Moir are back again.

For now it’s just Tessa and Scott, two kids from Ontario who never stopped dreaming.

“You were so great today, kiddo,” Scott says, his voice muffled slightly by her hair. “But I’ve gotta say it’s weird watching you dance with someone else.”

“Hmm,” she murmurs into his shoulder, “I kept waiting for you to show up to do the hug before I went out.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I think you might’ve ruined me for other men, Scott.”

He snorts before looking at her, eyebrows raised to the heavens, eyes expressive and huge.

“I don’t think I like dancing with anyone but you.”

He smiles and presses a kiss to the top of her head before murmuring “Me too, Virtch, me too.”

The next few months are a whirlwind of announcements and sponsorships and interviews and tours and choreography and getting back into the groove of things. Their programs start taking shape — a Prince medley for the short and an instrumental piece paired with Sam Smith for the free — and she can’t remember the last time training with Scott was this _fun_. They’re properly connecting on the ice, finally on solid ground again in terms of their relationship. Sure, they’re probably totally codependent for two _platonic_ friends, but they’re Tessa and Scott, and normal boundaries have never really applied for them. 

So it shouldn't matter that Scott croons “you lift my heart up, when the rest of me is down” every time they run through their free dance, or almost (and sometimes not quite almost, but for real) _licks_ her during the short. How he’s even more tactile than usual, how his face has somehow taken up permanent residence in the juncture between her neck and shoulder.

It shouldn’t matter, but it does, because ever since Tessa figured out that, _oh yeah, I’m hopelessly in love with Scott but too scared to tell him_ , she’s been hyperaware of his every movement, of his whereabouts at all times. And his steady presence is comforting, sure, but it leaves her wanting _more more more,_ all the time.

High Performance Camp is almost the breaking point. They’re in their respective rooms, and have taken to talking to one another over Twitter _(Which: Scott? Twitter? She’s as confused as the next person.)_ and are practically flirting with each other in front of the whole world. Using lyrics from their programs, because they’re cheesy like that. 

She’s incredibly proud of the fact that she doesn’t run out of her room and into his right that second to jump him like a madwoman, thank you very much. She’s always prided herself on her composure.

Training ramps up even more in the weeks after HPC, and with that, they start _streamlining_ everything. Or, as a normal person would say, Tessa thinks wistfully, almost cohabiting and acting like, well, _a couple_.

It turns out her breaking point comes on an ordinary Thursday, when Scott is cooking dinner from their b2ten meal plans and she’s keeping him company and it’s so achingly domestic and then they’re talking about weekend plans and their shared calendar and it’s all too much.

Before she truly knows what she’s doing, she’s pushed herself out of her chair, walked across the kitchen and pressed her lips to his, backing him into the counter. It takes him half a second to react, but then he’s kissing back with just as much intensity, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close.

When they break apart, breathless, she swears she’s never seen his eyes as big as they are right at this moment. “Holy shit, T,” he splutters out, and she has to laugh a little, high and breathy.

“Yeah.”

“That was…”

“Yeah.” She looks down at his t-shirt with admirable concentration, fingers the soft fabric and whispers, so softly that only he can hear: “Scott, I think I’m in love with you.”

She feels him go rigid before her, braces herself for the inevitable rejection, but he just tips her chin up so her eyes meet his. He’s grinning, ear to ear, his eyes shining with unshed tears and she swears he’s never looked this happy. Tears form in her own eyes, and she lets out a laugh that cracks in her throat just a little.

“Yeah?” he asks, to check.

She nods, and his eyes light up as he leans down, impossibly close, his lips almost brushing hers, his breath hot on her skin.

“Good, ‘cause I’m in love with you too. God, I love you so much, Tess.”

His lips meet hers and it’s pretty quick work from there, to turn off the stove with one hand and hoist her up with another, to stumble down the hallway to her bedroom and forget about the rest of the world for a while.

Who needs them anyway, she thinks, as he’s above her, around her, _everywhere_. He’s her whole world, and she thinks she might be his.

It’s like the change in their relationship acts as a blessing for the whole season. They just keep winning, even get the damn Grand Prix Final title they never managed to win (with the highest scores ever recorded, but who’s counting?) and pretty soon it’s them in Helsinki, two performances away from an undefeated season.

The short dance is textbook ice dancing, it’s explosive, it’s sharp, and she loves every second of it. 

The free dance is still one of her favourite programs. It’s their story, on the ice, deeply personal and raw and she connects with every note, with every lyric Scott sings at her, because it’s true. They’ve finally got each other, and they’re not about to let go.

Then, he slips. It’s a split-second of sheer panic, then he’s back, right there, and she makes a joke because she knows he needs to snap out of it. Another millisecond, and he’s fully immersed in the program again. Just like that, synchronicity.

They win Worlds; he blames himself for everything, praises her and she can’t do anything but smile and blush.

It’s only in the privacy of their hotel room that they properly address it. She cups his face in her hands and looks him straight in the eyes. “We won. We had an undefeated season, Scott. You didn’t let me down; you couldn’t. I love you so much, and there is still nobody else I would ever want to dance with. Okay?”

“Okay.” He’s fighting tears when he kisses her, and they lose themselves in each other for a while, because the fanfare doesn’t matter. _This_ does, she thinks, this moment with them in their bed, together.

If Sochi taught them anything, it’s that an Olympic year calls for _Olympic_ programs. So when Scott plays _El Tango de Roxanne_ and _Come What May_ , she instantly knows. This is it.

(Marie-France, it turns out, is not so enthusiastic and Tessa can’t help but giggle as their coach tries very hard not to curse at them in French. She eventually comes around, after some gentle coaxing from her, Scott, Sam and Patch. The latter gets called _un traitre_ for a solid week.)

Telling Christian and Satine’s story is infinitely special. Every step of the process this season feels special, and she and Scott cherish every moment. Every high and low (including the GPF, because it forced them to change the free dance, for the better) and all the emotions in between get stored away in her heart for safekeeping. She wants to remember this year, in full technicolour, for the rest of her life.

Pretty soon, they’re in Pyeongchang, and it feels as though the past two years have passed in the blink of an eye. 

This Olympics is a far cry from Sochi, from Vancouver, even. 

Every bit of the hard work, of the gruelling hours and the mental preparation, is working in their favour. Their comeback plan is unfolding exactly how they want it. 

And then, suddenly, it’s them on the ice — a gold medal and a world record already under their belts — waiting for the opening note.

When Tessa thinks back to 1997, and taking Scott’s hand for the very first time, she remembers how much she’d loved dancing. She still does; she expresses herself best through movement, because, as Isadora Duncan once said, _“If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.”_ But now, twenty years later and skating at the Olympics for the third time, she realizes something with perfect clarity:

She fell in love with dancing first, and then with Scott, and now, she thinks they’re pretty much synonymous. 

She trusts him implicitly as she jumps into the air and latches on to him, finds perfect synchronicity and fluidity in their movement together, and basks in his gaze as he professes to love her until his dying day.

When the music ends, he crushes her to him in the tightest hug and the world fades away. It’s him and her, and nothing else matters, except that they’re dancing, together, _until the end of time._

(And then, five minutes later, they win the Olympics. Which, she thinks as he raises her into the air after scooping her up in yet another hug, is a pretty great feeling too.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for making it this far! Quick note: Tessa did indeed appear as a cannon doll with the NBC, give it a quick search for an adorable photo.
> 
> As always, yell at me in the comments or on Tumblr (@good-things-come-in-threes) or on Twitter (@_bucketofrice)!


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